Does L.A.'s Porn Industry Inspire More Than Half The Divorces in America?

So says a recent piece in the otherwise liberal Huffington Post, which cites research from the conservative Center for Research on Marriage and Religion, which concludes that porn is a "family killer" and that smut was a factor in more than half of divorces.

Really? Columnist Vicki Larson writes:

Divorce attorneys tend to agree with Fagan's findings. At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two-thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers noted that the Internet was playing an increasing role in marital splits, with excessive online porn watching contributing to more than half of the divorces. According to Richard Barry, president of the association, "Pornography had an almost nonexistent role in divorce just seven or eight years ago."

Sasha Grey had her eye on your man?

The writer is fair enough to include some contradictory evidence, including Atlantic magazine senior editor Ross Douthat's declaration that " ... the attention paid to the connection between porn and infidelity doesn't translate into anything like a consensus on what that connection is."

And Larson considers the idea that porn could just be an out for couples in trouble anyway. An ultimatum is set by the woman -- porn or me -- and the man, being a man, secretly uses porn until he is caught, deliberately or not.

If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters.

SHOW ME HOW

Newsletters

SUCCESS!

You have successfully signed up for your selected newsletter(s) - please keep an eye on your mailbox, we're movin' in!

And the marriage is over. (But hey, at least he has warm, cozy porn to hug at night).

We prefer to think of porn as a marital aid. A sweet, nasty marital aid.

Added: The author of the HuffPo piece, Vicki Larson, responds, bummed at "journalism today" (e.g. this post), and emphasizing that "I thought I made a pretty balanced case" for both the porn-causes-divorce side and the porn-doesn't cause divorce argument.

Dennis Romero is an L.A. Weekly staff writer. He formerly worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.